The Exaltation of Jesus: Exploring How a Jewish Preacher from Galilee Became God

Bridgett Sutherland: This book expertly traces the development of Christianity throughout the centuries following the death of Jesus. It forces the reader to reflect on and to rethink his or her beliefs in Christ.

Canada on Oct 16, 2023

Mr. Roger Eden: The author was a religious scholar, in this book he tries to look at the same source material from the perspective of an academic historian. How can the Trinity be monotheism? Did people who knew Jesus, think he was God etc.

The texts we have, are thin on fact and mostly written, one or more generations after Jesus. From whatever perspective, conjecture is required.

He reviews the development of ideas such as the Trinity.

He claims, that the rule of an historian means he should lean towards plausibility, rather than belief.
He fails on some very basic “facts”, asserting that the Gospels were written in Greek. That’s unlikely, as people from a distant provincial village such as Nazareth of the time, would have spoken Aramaic and Hebrew but probably not very literate and certainly Greek was unlikely.

The first three Gospels were written for an Aramaic speaking audience, John is the only Gospel for which we have scraps of the original and this was written in koine (ancient) Greek. Mathew Mark and Luke were almost certainly, originally written in Aramaic.

So his prolific reliance on the phrase “Son of Man”, depends on the Greek...

United Kingdom on Jan 20, 2022

Thomas Becker: Wenn man dieses Buch von Bart Ehrman liest, so kann man nicht umhin, diesen Menschen zu mögen, der sich große Mühe gibt, etwas zu vermitteln, das für ihn von allergrößter Bedeutung ist, denn, wie es scheint, kann er nicht anders, als sich immerzu diesem Thema zu widmen.

Ich gehe davon aus, dass er in seinem Leben eine starke Enttäuschung erfahren hat, die ihn nicht mehr loslässt und die ihn vorantreibt. Das geht auch kaum anders.

Er hat gute Lesefrüchte über die Welt des Altertums angeboten, was zu würdigen ist.

Jesus sah sich aber wohl nicht in der Tradition eines Herakles, der herkulische Aufgaben bewältigen wollte. Auch wenn wir in unserer Welt einen Augiasstall auszumisten haben.

Götter gibt es in der Tat viele, was auch im Neuen Testament nicht geleugnet wird:

(1.Kor 8:5 [ELB-BK])
Denn wenn es nämlich solche gibt, die Götter genannt werden, sei es im Himmel oder auf der Erde, (wie es ja viele Götter und viele Herren gibt)

(1.Kor 8:6 [ELB-BK])
so ist doch für uns ein Gott, der Vater, von dem alle Dinge sind, und wir für ihn, und ein Herr, Jesus Christus, durch den alle Dinge sind, und wir durch ihn.

Wer...

Germany on Nov 01, 2020

giancarlo bernacchi: Per usare le parole dell'A. “Gesù fu un predicatore apocalittico itinerante nella profonda Galilea rurale” messo a morte per “crimini contro lo stato. Ma poco dopo la sua morte i suoi seguaci sostennero che fosse un essere divino. In effetti andarono anche oltre, dichiarando che egli non era altri che Dio, Signore del cielo e della terra.”(pag.1). In questo libro Bart Ehrman esamina – da storico – l'evoluzione del pensiero della chiesa primitiva in proposito, fino al Concilio di Nicea. Esiste ovviamente una gradualità nello sviluppo della concezione della divinità di Cristo, ma è sorprendente che “il più accadde nei primi venti anni”(pag. 371), come testimonia il cosiddetto “poema dei Filippesi”, trascritto da Paolo nella sua lettera ai cristiani di Filippi ma proveniente da una tradizione anteriore agli anni 50-55, in cui già si afferma che Cristo è un essere divino. A uno sviluppo apparentemente lineare della Cristologia nel I secolo fa seguito il frazionamento della speculazione teologica nei secoli successivi, che l'A. segue in dettaglio fino al II secolo e più sommariamente fino al IV.
Il libro presenta molti motivi di interesse. La materia...

Italy on Jul 04, 2017

Daniel McClellan: The Jesus of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee will be unfamiliar and even unpalatable to many readers of this book, both lay and scholarly. Many of the arguments enjoy widespread academic support and will be familiar, particularly to fans of Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, but Ehrman also outlines some newer conclusions that will strike some scholars as peculiar and intriguing and convince others that Ehrman is more of an apostate and notorious skeptic than they ever could have imagined.

Those looking for a heavily detailed and annotated engagement with competing viewpoints will be disappointed, but Ehrman’s priority with this publication doesn’t seem to be to make a comprehensive case for his christological model. Rather the goal appears to be to conduct a sort of guided tour through his own conceptualization of the development of Jesus’ exaltation and the logic and evidence that led him to it. Stories at the beginning of each chapter about Ehrman’s interactions with the questions he explores lend a personal touch to the book by illustrating how integrated into his development as a...

United States on May 20, 2014

Mac McAleer: This is a long, detailed, well written book which presents a view of the early Christian Church that many may find surprising. I personally found it a little unsettling and this reaction may be the power of this book. I was not sure about the material and its interpretation. The problem is that you need to be a New Testament scholar to be in a position to read this book critically. It is a best-seller in the USA, which surprises me. Why would Christians want to read a book that so profoundly undermines their beliefs and why would non-Christians be interested? The answer is: Because Christians read it to refute it and non-Christians read it to understand the origins of the Christian and post-Christian culture in which they live.

THE ARGUMENTS: Ehrman starts with a description of the treatment of the divine in pagan society where there were many gods and many levels of divinity. He then moves on to the treatment of the divine in the monotheistic Jewish society including attitudes to angels, to heretical Jewish beliefs of a second divinity, the "Son of Man", in Daniel and the non-canonical Book of Enoch and the traces of pagan divinities in the older parts of the Old...

United Kingdom on Apr 28, 2014

Mamlukman: I have read several of Bart's books, and though I can take issue with him here and there (as other reviewers have on certain points) I find them uniformly clear, informative, and well written.

I would quibble with Bart about all the Gospels being written in Greek. Certainly the versions we have were written in Greek. But there is reason to think that Matthew, at least, was written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. Some scholar, whose name I have forgotten, translated Matthew into Aramaic, and then back into Greek. In the process he realized that a lot of the phrasing, vocabulary, etc. was influenced by the Aramaic "original." The sources Bart lists (Q, L, M, etc.) may well have been in Aramaic--there's no evidence either way. St. Paul--clearly a Greek speaker--was very careful about the use of Greek words that translated Aramaic terms, showing he was aware of the underlying Aramaic. And although Bart keeps talking about the Apostles as illiterate peasants, I'm not sure they couldn't read or write. Matthew was a tax collector; doesn't that imply a degree of literacy? Jews of the time in general were expected to be familiar with scripture; doesn't that imply some...

United States on Apr 25, 2014